Artur Petrovsky. The problem of personality development from the standpoint of social psychology. Source http://psylib.org.ua/books/petya01/txt14.htm
It is necessary to distinguish between the proper psychological approach to personality development and the periodization of age stages based on it, and the proper pedagogical approach to the consistent isolation of the socially determined tasks of personality formation at the stages of ontogenesis.
The first of them is focused on what psychological research really reveals at the stages of age development in the corresponding specific historical conditions, what is (“here and now”) and what can be in a developing personality under the conditions of purposeful educational influences. The second is about what and how should be formed in the personality so that it meets all the requirements that society imposes on it at this age stage. It is the second, proper pedagogical approach that makes it possible to build a hierarchy of activities that, at successively changing stages of ontogenesis, should act as leading ones for the successful solution of the problems of education and upbringing. The value of such an approach cannot be overestimated. At the same time, there is a danger of mixing both approaches, which in some cases can lead to the replacement of the actual by the desired. We get the impression that purely terminological misunderstandings play a certain role here. The term «personality formation» has a double meaning: 1) «personality formation» as its development, its process and result; 2) «formation of the personality» as its purposeful /20/ education (if I may say so, «shaping», «molding», «designing», «molding», etc.). It goes without saying that if it is stated, for example, that “socially useful activity” is the leading one for the formation of a teenager’s personality, then this corresponds to the second (actually pedagogical) meaning of the term “formation”.
In the so-called formative psychological-pedagogical experiment, the positions of the teacher and the psychologist are combined. However, one should not erase the difference between what and how should be formed (personality design) by a psychologist as a teacher (the goals of education are set, as you know, not by psychology, but by society) and what a teacher as a psychologist should investigate, finding out what was and what became in the structure of a developing personality as a result of pedagogical influence.